ANAHEIM, Calif. -- The names of Maryland's all-time great players flooded into fiery associate coach Billy Hahn's memory not long after the Terrapins earned their first trip to the Final Four.
Hahn thought about Buck Williams, Tom McMillen, Albert King, Adrian Branch,
Gene Shue, John Lucas, Len Elmore, Joe Smith and Steve Francis.
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| Hang on, Terps fans. Tahj Holden, Mike Mardesich and crew have more they want to accomplish. (AP) | |
"I played with Lucas, McMillen, Elmore, Brad Davis ... all of them," said Hahn, 47. "It's a great tradition. There are great names who never had a chance (at a Final Four). It's not always fair. It just happened to be our time. Our hard work paid off, and this will be a lifetime experience for all these people involved.
"I just wish all my teammates and coaches could experience this because there have been some great teams and great players at Maryland who never had this opportunity. Think about all the people. Think about it. It's amazing. This is happiness for a lot of people."
In the middle of talking about perhaps the nation's finest program that had never been to a Final Four, before it snatched its first trip to the national semifinals Saturday by beating Stanford, Hahn stopped and looked around the Maryland locker room in the Pond.
"These guys," Hahn said, "are pretty good players, too."
Indeed, the latest and greatest version of the Terps watched the Cardinal cut a 10-point deficit to three at the start of the second half, but Maryland (25-10) quickly bounced back to push its cushion to a dozen.
Stanford didn't threaten again. Just a month and a half ago, a loss to Duke -- after Maryland held a 10-point lead in the final minute -- triggered a stretch in which the Terps dropped five of six games.
The pressure of repelling the Cardinal early in the second half Saturday paled in comparison to the heat Maryland took for that 2½-week stretch from late January to the middle of February.
"Yeah, that (mini Stanford run) was probably a little flicker compared to some of the punches we took this season," Hahn said. "I'm not going to lie to you, I felt we were going to win today. We went after them and didn't back down. When we made that run back at them, I thought that was big in the game."
When Hahn was in high school, Maryland was big to him. He visited Michigan State, Purdue and Maryland out of Penn High in Indiana, but former Terrapins coach Lefty Driesell made it an easy decision for him.
"Lefty was selling the 'UCLA of the East' at that time," Hahn said. "He was a great salesman. At that time, there were very few games on national television, and Maryland was on TV a lot. I had a real good visit. It wasn't really close. I wanted to go to Maryland."
A scrappy reserve with the Terps, he earned the team's "greatest career contribution" honor as a senior in 1974-75, when he served as captain. He wilted on the Greensboro Coliseum bench on March 9, 1974, when North Carolina State beat Maryland 103-100 in overtime of the ACC Tournament title game.
The Wolfpack had David Thompson, and they went on to defeat UCLA in double
overtime in a national semifinal en route to the NCAA championship.
"The greatest (ACC) game, they say," Hahn said of the ACC finale. "They beat us, all right. (But) if we win that game, (maybe) we go to the Final Four that year? There's a very fine line to getting to the Final Four. You have to be a little lucky, and you have to be playing well at the right time.
"Unfortunately, everyone judges you on getting to the Final Four, which is not the right way to judge a program."
It's difficult for a program to be considered among the elite, though, if it has never gone up against the best in the game's marquee event. Twice before, and both times with Hahn on the roster, the Terps lost the game that could have sprung them into the Final Four.
In 1973, Maryland got a first-round bye, beat Syracuse in an East Regional semifinal and then fell apart in the second half of a 103-89 loss to Providence in Charlotte, N.C.
Two years later, there was no bye for the Terrapins. They beat Creighton and Notre Dame before losing a 96-82 game -- in which the Maryland bench received a technical foul -- to Louisville in the Midwest final in Las Cruces, N.M.
"I remember those tears," Hahn said.
Driesell gave Hahn the honor of starting each of those NCAA Tournament games in '75, but they were brief stretches. Against Creighton, Hahn played five minutes, grabbing a rebound and missing both of his free-throw attempts. He played only the first minute against Notre Dame and Louisville.
At least Hahn experienced the NCAA Tournament as a player. As the Maryland point guard from 1964-67, Terrapins coach Gary Williams never reached the NCAAs. By far the best Maryland did with Williams as a player was its 18-8 record in 1964-65.
The 1971-72 squad lost to North Carolina in the conference tournament then went on to finish 27-5 after winning the NIT. McMillen averaged almost 21 points when he helped Maryland win 73 of 90 games from 1972-74, but only one of those was a victory in the NCAAs.
The program that is still haunted by the 15-year-old Len Bias tragedy can now bask in triumph. If Maryland wins the NCAA title, it will be only the fourth team to do so with double-digit defeats.
"It's everybody's dream, as a player and a coach. Every kid who ever plays basketball and works on his game thinks about making shots at the Final Four, getting to the Final Four," Hahn said. "This is for the former players, the tradition of Maryland basketball, that we never got. It goes to all those coaches, players, managers ...
"Everyone involved in the program, this is for them. I mean that. This is the ultimate dream. So the dream's come true for us. I wish the dream could come true for a lot of people."
